Could Machine Learning Mean the End of Understanding in Science?

Much to the chagrin of summer party planners, weather is a notoriously chaotic system. Small changes in precipitation, temperature, humidity, wind speed or direction, etc. can balloon into an entirely new set of conditions within a few days. That’s why weather forecasts become unreliable more than about seven days into the future—and why picnics need backup plans.

But what if we could understand a chaotic system well enough to predict how it would behave far into the future?